Several times today, I’ve found myself in conversations with people in which we exclaim over the fact that today is the first day of March (and it’s coming in like a lion here in Philly, with 8 to 10 inches of snow expected in the next 12 hours). However, it wasn’t until this evening that I realized that it wasn’t just the first day of March, it was also the 21st anniversary of my family’s move to Portland.

I remember the day we left LA quite clearly, as we packed up our 1986 Subaru and headed north out of Southern California. My sister and I fought over the amount of space the other was taking up in the backseat, and I traced our route on a map.

The drive took two days, and so we stayed in a motel someplace in the Northern California mountains. I remember my dad carefully cleaning the backseat windows before we pulled out, saying, “we’re going to be traveling through some beautiful country today, and I want to make sure you guys can see it.”

While I haven’t lived in Portland in more than seven years, I still call it home. I feel so grateful that I had the good fortune to grow up in such a wonderful city.